The bartender brought over the glass of wine and replenished the bowl of nuts. Once he’d left, Sara turned to Tsukuru.
“I’ve never experienced that myself, but I think I can imagine how stunned you must have been. I understand that you couldn’t recover from it quickly. But still, after time had passed and the shock had worn off, wasn’t there something you could have done? I mean, it was so unfair. Why didn’t you challenge it? I don’t see how you could stand it.”
Tsukuru shook his head slightly. “The next morning I made up some excuse to tell my family and took the bullet train back to Tokyo. I couldn’t stand being in Nagoya for one more day. All I could think of was getting away from there.”
“If it had been me, I would have stayed there and not left until I got to the bottom of it,” Sara said.
“I wasn’t strong enough for that,” Tsukuru said.
“You didn’t want to find out the truth?”
Tsukuru stared at his hands on the tabletop, carefully choosing his words. “I think I was afraid of pursuing it, of whatever facts might come to light. Of actually coming face-to-face with them. Whatever the truth was, I didn’t think it would save me. I’m not sure why, but I was certain of it.”
“And you’re certain of it now?”
“I don’t know,” Tsukuru said. “But I was then.”
“So you went back to Tokyo, stayed holed up in your apartment, closed your eyes, and covered up your ears.”
“You could say that, yes.”
Sara reached out and rested her hand on top of his. “Poor Tsukuru,” she said. The softness of her touch slowly spread through him. After a moment she took her hand away and lifted the wineglass to her mouth.
“After that I went to Nagoya as seldom as possible,” Tsukuru said. “When I did return, I tried not to leave my house, and once I was done with whatever I had to do, I came back to Tokyo as quickly as I could. My mother and older sisters were worried and asked me if something had happened, but I never said anything. There was no way I could tell them.”
“Do you know where the four of them are now, and what they’re doing?”
“No, I don’t. Nobody ever told me, and I never really wanted to know.”
Sara swirled the wine in her glass and gazed at the ripples, as if reading someone’s fortune.
“I find this very strange,” she said. “That incident was obviously a huge shock, and in a way, it changed your life. Don’t you think?”
Tsukuru gave a small nod. “In a lot of ways I’ve become a different person.”
“How so?”
“Well, I feel more often how dull and insignificant I am for other people. And for myself.”
Sara gazed into his eyes for a time, her voice serious. “I don’t think you’re either dull or insignificant.”
“I appreciate that,” Tsukuru said. He gently pressed his fingers against his temple. “But that’s an issue I have to figure out on my own.”
“I still don’t follow,” Sara said. “The pain caused by that incident is still in your mind, or your heart. Or maybe both. But I think it’s very clearly there. Yet for the last fifteen or sixteen years you’ve never tried to trace the reason why you had to suffer like that.”
“I’m not saying I didn’t feel like knowing the truth. But after all these years, I think it’s better just to forget about it. It was a long time ago, and it’s all sunk within the past.”
Sara’s thin lips came together, and then she spoke. “I think that’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous? How so?”
“You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them.” Sara looked directly into his eyes. “If nothing else, you need to remember that. You can’t erase history, or change it. It would be like destroying yourself.”
“Why are we talking about this?” Tsukuru said, half to himself, trying to sound upbeat. “I’ve never talked to anybody about this before, and never planned to.”
Sara smiled faintly. “Maybe you needed to talk with somebody. More than you ever imagined.”
· · ·
That summer, after he returned to Tokyo from Nagoya, Tsukuru was transfixed by the odd sensation that, physically, he was being completely transformed. Colors he’d once seen appeared completely different, as if they’d been covered by a special filter. He heard sounds that he’d never heard before, and couldn’t make out other noises that had always been familiar. When he moved, he felt clumsy and awkward, as if gravity were shifting around him.
For the five months after he returned to Tokyo, Tsukuru lived at death’s door. He set up a tiny place to dwell, all by himself, on the rim of a dark abyss. A perilous spot, teetering on the edge, where, if he rolled over in his sleep, he might plunge into the depth of the void. Yet he wasn’t afraid. All he thought about was how easy it would be to fall in.
All around him, for as far as he could see, lay a rough land strewn with rocks, with not a drop of water, nor a blade of grass. Colorless, with no light to speak of. No sun, no moon or stars. No sense of direction, either. At a set time, a mysterious twilight and a bottomless darkness merely exchanged places. A remote border on the edges of consciousness. At the same time, it was a place of strange abundance. At twilight birds with razor-sharp beaks came to relentlessly scoop out his flesh. But as darkness covered the land, the birds would fly off somewhere, and that land would silently fill in the gaps in his flesh with something else, some other indeterminate material.
Tsukuru couldn’t fathom what this substance was. He couldn’t accept or reject it. It merely settled on his body as a shadowy swarm, laying an ample amount of shadowy eggs. Then darkness would withdraw and twilight would return, bringing with it the birds, who once again slashed away at his body.
He was himself then, but at the same time, he was not. He was Tsukuru Tazaki, and not Tsukuru Tazaki. When he couldn’t stand the pain, he distanced himself from his body and, from a nearby, painless spot, observed Tsukuru Tazaki enduring the agony. If he concentrated really hard, it wasn’t impossible.
Even now that feeling would sometimes spring up. The sense of leaving himself. Of observing his own pain as if it were not his own.
After they left the bar Tsukuru invited Sara to dinner again. Maybe we could just have a bite nearby? he asked. Grab a pizza? I’m still not hungry, Sara replied. Okay, Tsukuru said, then how about going back to my place?
“Sorry, but I’m not in the mood today,” she said, reluctantly but firmly.
“Because I went on about all that stupid stuff?” Tsukuru asked.
She gave a small sigh. “No, that’s not it. I’ve just got some thinking to do. About all kinds of things. So I’d like to go home alone.”
“Of course,” Tsukuru said. “You know, I’m really glad I could see you again, and talk with you. I just wish we’d had a more pleasant topic to talk about.”
She pursed her lips tightly for a moment and then, as if coming to a decision, spoke. “Would you ask me out again? As long as you don’t mind, I mean.”
“Of course. If it’s okay with you.”
“It is.”
“I’m glad,” Tsukuru said. “I’ll email you.”
They said goodbye at the subway entrance. Sara took the escalator up to the Yamanote line and Tsukuru took the stairs down to the Hibiya line. Each of them back to their homes. Each lost in their own thoughts.
Tsukuru, of course, had no idea what Sara was thinking about. And he didn’t want to reveal to her what was on his mind. There are certain thoughts that, no matter what, you have to keep inside. And it was those kinds of thoughts that ran through Tsukuru’s head as he rode the train home.
In the half year when he wandered on the verge of death, Tsukuru lost fifteen pounds. It was only to be expected, as he barely ate. Since childhood his face had been full, if anything, but now he became wasted and gaunt. Tightening his belt wasn’t enough; he had to buy smaller trousers. When he undressed, his ribs stuck out like a cheap birdcage. His posture grew visibly worse, his shoulders slumped forward. With all the weight loss his legs grew spindly, like a stork’s. As he stared at his naked self in the mirror, a thought hit him: This is an old man’s body. Or that of someone near death.